


A Better Human than a Troll

by smarmyPirate



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, M/M, Multi, Sort of? - Freeform, Trolls in the human world, not really any of the kids though, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:17:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1772098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarmyPirate/pseuds/smarmyPirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things can't be helped. Death, for example, is rather hard to stop at a moment's notice. And Karkat found this out all too clearly when a certain red ship landed, well, directly on top of him.</p>
<p>And did he get sent to a peaceful (yeah, right) death in the dream bubbles? No, there was no way he could be so lucky. No, he ended up going through a rip in Paradox Space, and landed in a new life, one that contained truly a fate worse than death-</p>
<p>Public School.</p>
<p>(Reposted and edited from my fanfiction.net account)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stuck, But Not In a Home

If you knew Karkat Vantas in the years after he met and conversed with the humans, you knew that his hatred for them and their weak stature and their weak bodies knew no bounds. If ever there was a troll that wanted to be a human (Looking at you, Cronus Ampora), it sure wasn’t Karkat. That much was always clear and will always be clear.

But then, Paradox Space didn’t always give people, or trolls, or whatever, what they wanted. And when a sudden death gave Karkat access to the afterlife, he found himself living in a sort of Ironic Hell. One that is rather familiar to most of us… One that contains the true horror that is Public School.

Your name is Karkat Vantas. Obviously. What else would it be? That’s so stupid. You don’t exactly have time for this, anyway. Right now, you are in the jungle with Kanaya, watching your former matesprit get tortured by your former moirail. And the worst part? There is nothing that you can do about it. There’s no way to stop him, no way to save her, nothing to do but watch. Watch the horror and destruction and murder and torture.

What could you do to help? They were surrounded by lava, for fuck’s sake! Plus, you aren’t exactly sure that you can do this. To save Terezi, you will definitely have to fight Gamzee, probably to the death. To say nothing of his physical strength and inability to die, there was just… a certain bond you had with him. You two had been moirails once, after all! And, well, despite all of the terrible things that Gamzee had done, you still weren’t sure if you can actually kill the other troll. Gamzee Makara was your moirail once. And you just don’t kill your moirail. Not ever.

While you were too busy being a gigantic tool to either help Terezi, stop Gamzee, or even pay attention to your surroundings for once, a large ship came into view. Her Imperious Condescension’s ship. The Batterwitch’s very large, very heavy battleship from hell.

You also didn’t notice that it was landing.

Landing, right there and then, right on top of none other than you. Kanaya too, you might have realised, if you weren’t already too dead to care.

A swift drop, a quick kill, and you (and possibly Kanaya) were too dead to do much of anything.

And unfortuantly, no matter what you did, you were probably going to stay that way for at least a little bit. You were, in all honesty, sort of worthless. You weren’t godtier. If you were, that would have made it so much easier. Naturally, there is hardly any situation where getting landed on by a spaceship is either heroic or just. Mostly, it’s just sort of an idiotic, dumb way to die.

And you couldn’t be resurrected by Jane Crocker, either. Not that you really thought that she would be bothered to resurrect you if she could, but the fact was, that she couldn’t. One time per person. (Or troll, in this case.) And she had sort of wasted your time. 

No big deal to them. What’s a dead troll to the humans? Nothing much. 

Of course, to you, your death was something of a big deal. But maybe that was just because it was your own self dying, and not resurrecting. Ever. It was sort of a thing that was happening to you right now, and there was no way to unhappen it.

You had at least expected to go to one of the horrible dream bubbles. Who knows, maybe you could meet up with Vriska, and Nepeta, and all of your other dead friends, and even maybe all of those horrible Dancestors? It wouldn’t be the best afterlife but you would be with your friends again.

But you didn’t even get that much. You didn’t get to see your shitty friends again, or to become part of a (probably idiotic) pirate crew, or anything that could be remotely in the range of ‘tolerable’. You didn’t get to have any sort of happy death, because instead, you were too busy dealing with the ironic hell sort of place that Paradox Space had thought it would be the best idea ever thought up in it’s miniscule think pan to send you to.

Just. Fucking. Great.

You got slapped casually into another universe. Well, kind of. In some ways, it was the same. In others, it was literally three thousand times shittier. You got put right into the biggest, worst hell that any (non)living creature could ever hope to enter.

You know, public school?

Somehow, somewhere, something fucked up. You got pulled out of the alpha timeline, or something to that nature, and ended up in a public school. On Earth.

And the worst part? 

You still had all your memories. The last thing that happened was etched into your mind as if it had been carved by someone who couldn’t draw, maybe while on top of some salamanders, into a hapless stone tablet handed to him by a mail carrier. Or something. You don’t know; you just love mail. Your whole other life was etched into your mind in this manner. But instead of being there, fighting with your friends, stopping Gamzee from hurting Terezi, instead of even being allowed to DIE, you were plopped right into the vertifiable shit sack of the education center.

Add to that a human hive, 

And one of the strange human lusii,

And the fact that you were still a troll, just now in the world of humans, which might have been the worst thing of all, and you had the recipe for the shittiest day ever, all made possible by Betty Crocker’s delicious help.

And you were a freak. A troll in the land of humans.

In a way, you were just another sort of mutant, then. No matter where you were, you would always, always be a mutant.

Another thing that struck you as a cruel twist of fate was the fact that you were going to have the same blood color as all the others now, pretty much. But they were still going to think that you were a freak.

That was all that you’d ever be.

 

Hours in the Past (But not many)

You woke up on your back, hardly breathing. Somewhere in your mind, it struck you that you were finally dead now. But you didn’t really care. Maybe you had even done something right, because when you woke up, you felt a soft sort of feeling under you, and there was a sweet, comforting smell to the air. It was peaceful enough that, even as insomniatic as you were, you drifted right back to sleep again.

But no matter what, the cruel hands of being awake were going to pull you to them, and eventually, you woke up, no matter how comforting and soft the room was, the scent was, and all the other variables that easily made this the best place that you had ever been.

Slowly, you blinked a few times, feeling rather lazy, but not really caring. Maybe you were allowed to feel lazy. After all, not only had you just been killed, but you had been killed in such a way that your death could easily be played off as humorous. You knew that people were laughing about it back where people were alive. Oh, how you hated them. Plus, you had been awake for so long… more sleep felt like it was definitely needed. 

But before you could drift into a third round of sleep, you heard a voice. It was feminine, yet commanding, and stern, yet concerned. All very strange, but you didn’t concentrate on that. You were a little too busy freaking the fuck out, silently.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Are you okay? I found you in the middle of the street! I almost ran you over!”

Painfully, your brain forced you to pay attention to what was happening in reality.You closed your little dream death fantasy and tried to force yourself to sit up, wake up, and pay attention to whatever shithive was bothering you this time.

It was a painful decision.

A very, very painful decision.

Moaning, you sunk back into the position you had been in before, not bothering to look at the person who had spoken.

However, upon realising that the voice didn’t sound particularly troll like, or familiar in any way to you, you did look up. Sure enough, she was human.

Other than Jade, John, Rose, Dave, and the few crazy God Tiers that you had seen, this was the first human that you ever met. And certainly the first human that was an adult.

Wow, she was strange.

It was hard for you to get over the fact that all humans were vastly different, appearance wise. Sure, all their blood colours were the same, (must be nice) but they had different skin and hair colours, and eyes. All that stuff that didn’t change from troll to troll on Alternia.

This particular human had skin that he later learned was Middle Eastern, a thick set build, lightly colored clothes, and a pink cloth wrapped around her head. She was smiling widely, her dark eyes gleaming. You were, to say the least, far less amused than she was.

“OKAY. I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU THREE MINUTES TO TELL ME WHERE I AM, WHO YOU ARE, AND WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON, BEFORE I LITERALLY STAB YOU IN THE STOMACH LIKE JACK FUCKING NOIR.”

The lady looked rather offended, for some reason or another. “Well, young man! That’s not the response I was hoping for! I took you into my house, saved your life, most probably! Don’t start cussing, or I might just have to throw you right back out into the streets!”

“WELL I’M SO FUCKING SORRY THEN.” You weren’t exactly being nice. This much, at least, was clear to you. Oh well.

At this point, you didn’t give many fucks. You were in pain, you were in a strange place, and there was a strange woman looking down at you. None of this made any sense, and all you really wanted to do was go back to sleep on the soft couch in this lady’s hive. Or be back with your friends on Alternia. Or even on the fucking meteor of all places. Things might have been bad there, but at least that was coherent! At least that made some sort of warped fucking sense! More than this did, in any universe.

“Listen, kid, I’m just trying to help here. You could have died, passed out in the street as you were.”

“OKAY GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON THAT I SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO YOU. HM? OH WAIT, THERE BASICALLY ISN’T ONE BECAUSE I DID NOTHING WRONG. I DON’T EVEN HAVE MY PAST SELF TO APOLOGIZE FOR. ALL MY DIFFERENT SELVES WERE BLAMELESS. AND REALLY, I DON’T KNOW WHY I BOTHER TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT I HAVE TO GET BACK TO MY FRIENDS ON THE OTHER PLANET. SOME SHIT IS GOING DOWN OUT THERE.”

“Hmm? You were passed out in the middle of the street, child, maybe you were having a night terror?”

“NO, THIS WAS REAL AS SHIT.HOPEFULLY, THIS IS ALL A SHITTY DREAM, AND I NEVER HAD TO MEET SOMEONE AS REPULSIVE AS YOU IN REAL LIFE.”

She didn’t look as offended as you had secretly hoped she would. She just sort of laughed, and patted your knee in a way that was entirely too familiar.

“I don’t think so, honey. I’m sorry. What was happening before you passed out?”

“I THINK… THAT I MIGHT HAVE DIED.” You felt your walls of defence fall down, and panicked in a little way.

“Well that clears things up! You must have been dreaming, because you seem pretty alive to me!”

“I DON’T KNOW. THIS COULD BE HELL. I THINK I MUST BE IN HELL RIGHT NOW. THAT’S THE ONLY POSSIBLE EXPLANATION AS TO WHY I’M WITH SOMEONE AS AWFUL AS YOU.”

“Am I really that bad as company?” Laughed the lady.

“WELL I DON’T KNOW. I GUESS YOU DON’T SEEM AS TERRIBLE AS SOME OF THE ASSHOLES I USED TO HANG AROUND. BUT I JUST NEED TO GET BACK TO MY FRIENDS… SOMEHOW. AGAIN, ANYWHERE’S BETTER THAN THIS SHIT HIVE.”

“Well, in the mean time, maybe I could help you get your real memory back! What’s your name, kid?”

“THOSE ARE MY REAL MEMORIES. STOP TREATING ME LIKE A WRIGGLER. AND I DON’T KNOW WHY I SHOULD TELL YOU, BUT MY NAME IS KARKAT VANTAS.”

“Well, there’s no need to shout, but okay! That’s a very unique name; I don’t think that I’ve ever heard it before.”

“I WASN’T SHOUTING. AND MY NAME IS STILL BETTER THAN WHATEVER THE HELL YOUR HUMAN NAME IS, SO FUCK YOU.”

“I wasn’t insulting your name! But next question: Why is your skin so gray? Please don’t tell me it’s because you’re on drugs… I really can’t deal with that again.” The lady’s face twisted in memories that you could tell that she didn’t want to talk about. Well, good, you didn’t want to talk to her about touchy feely shit, either, so it worked out for both of you.

“I GUESS YOU MUST HAVE USED SOME THINK PAN ROTTING SHIT AT SOME POINT. OBVIOUSLY I’M NOT ON DRUGS, OR WHATEVER THE HELL YOUR HUMAN TERM IS. I’M A TROLL. THAT’S WHY MY SKIN IS GRAY.”

The lady seemed confused. “What’s a troll? Is it some sort of internet group or-”

“NO. IT’S MY SPECIES! I WAS BORN ON ALTERNIA, SO I’M A TROLL. SEE? I HAVE HORNS, YOU IGNORANT DISGRACE TO EVEN YOUR SHITTY SOCIETY.”

“I certainly don’t see any horns! Oooh… maybe you got some head damage when you were knocked out?”

“I DO SO HAVE HORNS!” You yelled indignantly. “THEY’RE RIGHT HERE YOU BLIND SHIT HEAD!”

You adjusted your hair so that your (admittingly minescule) horns were showing. You were feeling pretty pissed off now. For one thing, the lady had insulted your horns. Yes, they were small, but that didn’t mean that they were INVISIBLE. Two, you really needed to get back to your friends. They were probably really needing you right now. 

Okay who were you kidding they didn’t need you literally what could you do to help.

But still.

The lady’s face when she saw Karkat’s your was almost worth the fact that you couldn’t see your friends again. Your only wish was that you had been filming the moment. 

“Oh my… Are those real?”

You nodded dangerously.

The lady almost fainted, and started muttering some sort of prayer. “Are you… a demon?”

“NO, I’M NOT A DEMON! I JUST TOLD YOU, I’M A TROLL. AN... ALIEN, I GUESS?”

“...An alien?” She was whispering now, for no clear reason. 

“YES.” You were really starting to lose the patience for this shit.

“Well, that’s… fun…” She was still in shock. You thought it was funny, you guessed, but it was growing old rather quickly, and you still didn’t know where the fuck you were. 

“YES, NOW CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET BACK TO MY FRIENDS? IT WAS KIND OF IMPORTANT, WHAT WAS GOING ON. I’M SURE THAT EVEN YOUR FUCKING DIPSHIT HUMAN BRAIN CAN COMPREHEND THAT MUCH.”

The lady laughed a little bit. “Well, Paint,” she said to herself, “This could be a good little adventure, couldn’t it? Yes… helping an alien get back to his friends… It’ll be just like E.T! I could be just like that little boy, Elliot.”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, BUT SURE. YES. YOU SHOULD BE JUST LIKE ELLEN OR WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU JUST SAID.”

“Well, mister shouty, I will help you, but you’re going to have to be nicer than that! And no more cussing!”

“NOT FUCKING LIKELY.” You huffed indignantly.


	2. Target, Showers, and Other Impossible Tasks

A Better Human Than a Troll

Chapter 2: Target, Showers, and other Impossible Tasks

 

You weren’t aware that you had fallen asleep- AGAIN- until you woke up on the 100% idiotic, yet soft and comfortable as fuck, flowery couch. This time, luckily, you were alone. That irritating woman had finally gone off to bed.

It occurred to you that you could have left right then and there. There was no reason to stick around with the stupid woman trying to make you ‘watch your tone’ and ‘mind your manners’. What bullshit. 

But even as you were contemplating getting up, running away, and absconding right the fuck out, you knew that you couldn't actually pull your sorry excuse of a body off the couch, much less to get it to get up and leave the actual premises. It’s like who are you, Supertroll? There was simply no way. You were in too much pain, and the slightest movement hurt like hell. Plus,you didn’t really see a real reason to run away. The lady seemed like she was going to help you. She was slightly annoying, but in your mind, there was probably no one that wasn’t. Literally everyone except for you is an asshole. You, on the other hand, are the ultimate asshole. The true king of the holes which dwell in the asses. So why not? Plus, maybe she actually could get you back to your friends, somehow.

And even if she couldn’t, something told you that having some person on your side in this huge, unfamiliar world was a good thing.

But that didn’t mean that you were going to stay forever. Haha, she WISHED you liked it enough there to grace her with your presence for the rest of her shitty, natural born life.

But there was simply no way.

No way in HELL.

You were just going to… rest here… for a little bit.

Yes, that was it, you told yourself as you drifted back off to sleep. You would only rest here. For a little while.

 

It was a few hours later when you woke up again. Wow, you really had been sleeping a lot lately. Trying to catch up on sleep made you realise how much sleep you had really missed. 

When you blinked back to a state of consciousness that sucked a significant amount more than the sweet grasp of sleep, you looked around and saw the lady again. Her.

“Hello, dear! I was just waiting for you to wake up…”

“WELL, I’M AWAKE NOW, SO WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS SO IMPORTANT THAT YOU WILL STAND THERE AND WAIT FOR ME TO OPEN MY EYES LIKE A NEWBORN POUNCEBEAST.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement. Although you had only just woken up, you were already pissed off. But then again, when were you ever NOT? Never, that was when.

“Well, if you’re going to stay on my couch, you’re going to have to change a few things. First, you smell like you’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past three years or so. In other words: I’m going to have to buy you new clothes, because you smell so horrible, otherwise I’d have to burn that couch. And I quite like my couch.”  
You looked down at your hideous old sweater, and realised that you actually had been wearing it for about the last three years. It was now a threadbare piece of linen, draped over the thin, malnourished body of a young troll that had spent his adolescent years starving on a meteor, eating nothing but the smallest rations, because getting the shitty alchemizer on the hunk of rock to alchemize anything other than wine and tears was getting harder and harder by the day. Of course, that’s exactly what you were, and what had happened to you. And the sweater was short. Okay. But what were you supposed to do, change clothes? Where in the everloving fuck were you supposed to get new clothes?

Okay well there was always Kanaya but what were you a wriggler who needed his dumb lusus to get him a new shirt. 

“Second, you need to take a shower. So. I’m going to take you clothes shopping, and you’re going to get some new clothes! Won’t that just be fun?”

“I WOULD LITERALLY RATHER SAW OFF MY OWN HORNS AND EAT THEM THAN DO WHAT YOU JUST SAID.”

“Well, too bad, Mr. Shouty, because you need to get in my car, because we’re going to Target!”

 

“THIS IS THE FUCKING WORST.” You moaned, as you started shuffling towards her car at a speed that didn’t hurt your back too much. (See: you were moving so slowly it was going to take you about ten minutes to reach the car) But in reality, you were sort of glad for the chance to get out of the sweater. It was your last reminder of your fellow trolls, (other than the horrible memories, the ones that made you long to go back; to need to more than anything) but it was also about three years too small, and it came up awkwardly to halfway up your abdomen. It was awkward.

And Paint, or whatever her name was, was right; Your sweater smelled like hot lusus shit drying in the sun.

So you got into the stupid human transportation system, sitting in what Helen informed you was called the ‘shotgun’ position. The two of you drove to the ‘Target’ without much conversation, and for that, you were undeniably thankful. There was no way that you wanted to thank the lady, but if she started talking to you, you felt like you might have to show some form of the disgusting human emotion of gratitude, even… Friendship? Gross. That’s all you had to say on the matter; It was a gross feeling.

When you reached the so called ‘Target’, you forced yourself to walk faster than you actually wanted to, resulting in more pain. Pain, pain, pain… When was there ever anything else? Fucking never, that was when.

But you guess you did find some cool clothes. Trolls were never really fans of fashion, (unless you counted that freak Kanaya what was her deal anyway) but you liked having different choices in what to wear. There were these hoodies, and some shirts that you liked. And pants. And just clothes in general. Clothes that weren’t over three years old and smelling worse than lusus shit. 

What you didn’t like was the fact that while in the Target, everyone in the clothes section was staring at you with a sort of hate that you didn’t feel anywhere near comfortable dealing with. Ugh. Stupid humans and their stupid hates. Didn’t these jack asses know that without you, they wouldn’t even fucking exist? 

Probably not, what did those assholes know. Nothing, that was what.

The cashier at the Target was the worst one. She was an annoying looking human girl, probably not fully adult yet, but maybe close, with yellowish hair, pink fingernails, and three pieces of metal stabbed through her ear. You took an instant dislike to her.

“Okay, lady… That’s thirty four fifty. Cash or credit.” The girl asked in a bored tone, not even bothering to look up at Paint while she popped her gum between her teeth. 

“Credit, please.” Paint was oblivious to the nature of the rude girl, and that made you growl. It sort of reminded you of Nepeta back on the meteor… Ugh, you didn’t want to be reminded of Nepeta. Or any of them.

“Ugh, fine. Swipe your card, lady, get a move on.” 

That was the final straw. You growled at the girl. She finally looked up, her mouth sort of slack. Everything about her reeked and told you of her fear. You laughed at the girl as Paint, completely oblivious to this exchange, smiled and took the bags filled with your new clothes.

Leaving the Target with the bags full of clothes, you were debating whether to thank the woman or not.

She made it easier.

“You’re welcome, Karkat.”

“WHAT?”

“I guessed -shot in the dark, mind you- that you weren’t going to thank me. So I said you’re welcome. As a joke. It was ironic.”

Ironic. The very word brought up millions of painful thoughts. And among them, Dave. Dave. Your bro. You two had been friends while on that meteor, and You… Well, you and Dave had made a bro forever promise. And then you had gone and fucking died. could you seriously not do anything right?

What were you doing, getting clothes, and hats, and smiling at weird old human ladies? You knew what you should be doing, and that was getting back to your actual friends. You know; not being dead?

Back to Dave, back to all of th-

“Karkat? Karkat, are you okay? We’re back at my house!” 

Paint interrupted Karkat’s train of thought, smiling her seemingly plastered on smile. There was something about that smile that seemed so familiar, as well… but you couldn’t lay your stubby, clawed finger on it. As you snapped back to reality, and looked at her, you tried to figure out what was going on. Failing that, you bluffed your way through it like a professional liar. Damn, that was a job that you could do. “OH, YEAH… JUST THINKING ABOUT MY FRIENDS… IT’S NOTHING.”

“Okay, well don’t zone out like that, mister! Some people might get worried.”

“WELL CONSIDER THIS MY APOLOGY THAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING SO MUCH BETTER THAN SITTING HERE WITH YOU.” You growled, feeling more than a little pissed off, for the upteenth time that day.

Paint laughed like a woman a lot younger than she was.  
“Well, Shouty, how about you go take yourself a shower! It might wash off your dirty mouth, too.”

You glared, but took the bag of clothes into the room that the humans used for their cleansing and waste distribution. That was when you found yourself truly alone for the first time in a while. It was slightly horrifying.

“I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE.” You said to yourself. “I NEED TO GET BACK TO THEM.”

But how? How could you? That thought seemed to almost be a constant one ever since you woke up on Paint’s couch. How were you going to get back to you normal life? (Normal life, you know, where you were with a bunch of alien gods and stuff, fighting a juggalo murderer and a skull monster. You know, everyday stuff. Totally mundane and boring. Ho, hum, you say, bored at your totally boring not insane in any way life.) The answer hit you like a particularly painful drub of the cane. You weren’t.

You were alone. All alone. Sure, there was Helen, and she was nice, you guessed, but she wasn’t a friend, not really. The human emotion of friendship was just not making it’s sickening, tar like way into your metaphorical heart. You just wanted to go back to all the assholes that you used to spend your every tortured waking moment grueling in horn piles with. Even spending time with fucking Eridan Ampora of all trolls seemed marginally better and less horrid than it usually would have in your mind. (It still seemed like a fate worse than death, of course. Just… a bit better. A microscopic amount better. Okay who are you kidding it would have been fucking 12th Perigee’s to see that asswad in a scarf again.) 

But that was going to have to wait. Right now, you had a mission. You were going to take one of these shitty human showers.

Right.

Now if you could only figure out how to do that, maybe you could prove to yourself, Paint, and the entirety of Paradox Space and ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE who wanted to listen that you, Karkat Vantas, were not the literal shittiest troll ever hatched out of the sorry sack of the Mother Grub.

The first thing that you knew that you had to do was to take off all your gross, too small, threadbare clothing. Alright. That was easy enough. Why the living fig would you want to keep those shitty things on in the first place? Next, there were these knobs… What were you supposed to do with them again? Turn them? Okay, that was easy enough that the humans could do it. And you, you weren’t many things, but you were sure as hell smarter than any half assed excuse of a human.

As you attempted to turn them correctly,a powerful spray of water came out of the showerhead, right onto your unexpecting flesh.

“MOTHER-FUCKING-GRUB!”

You screeched as the water pressure turned on. This human concept of a ‘shower’ was clearly actually a horrible torture device in disguise. You could see it now. Paint was only keeping you here to distract you as her government sent in vehicles to take away an unsuspecting alien with his guard down. You would be taken away, experimented on, and eventually an attractive human love interest would hear of your ploy, take sympathy for your cause, and come in to rescue you. Obviously, you two would fall in love and overthrow her shitty human government. That was how it went down. You knew how shit worked. But you couldn’t worry about your future interspecies relationship yet. Currently you were battling a horrific water demon based torture device.

However, as you got used to it, it seemed to not be *so* bad. After a few minutes, the pain was a bit more tolerable.

And then the shower started heating up  
.   
And more, and more, and more, and more… Until it felt like you were literally on fire. That was the point where you freaked out a little bit (okay a lot bit), broke down sobbing, and sat naked in the painful burning water while you roasted until the hot water went out.

When it was finally cool again, you stood up, shame filled tears the likes of which had only been seen in animes and urban legends dripping down your face, and attempted to use the soap that Paint had supplied for you. But once again, you had literally no idea how it worked. 

Not that you didn’t have soap on Alternia. You did! But it was about 2 sweeps since you had even laid eyes on Alternia, and on a meteor filled with a bunch of 6 sweeps olds, soap wasn’t the first thing you thought of. Or the thirty fourth. Or the 128th. It probably never crossed any of your minds. Hence the actual failure at attempting to reintroduce it’s strange ways to your life once more.

Many soap filled eyes later, you gave up the washing attempt and got out of the now icy-cold shower, turning off the evil water pressure that was clearly out to get you.

“THAT WAS THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED. EVER.” You screamed to yourself, meaning every syllable. 

 

Later, you managed to dry yourself off without furthering your status as Paradox Space’s biggest fuckup, and put on the new clothes that Paint had purchased for you. Now you was lounging around comfortably in some new clothes, complete with a hoodie that Helen had insisted that she buy you so that you could hide his horns.

“Maybe you’ll be here for a while,” she had insisted. “You’ll want to blend in. This hoodie will hide your face and horns, and you might even look human!”

She said that like it was a good thing.

You had replied with how little you wished to look like those idiotic excuses for intelligent life, but agreed to wear the hoodie anyway. It had a crab across the front, and you had always liked crab for some deranged reason or another.

Looking at it now, you were reminded of his former lusus, whom you had never really liked. And yet memories came flooding back. Being able to talk to him after you had prototyped him into your sprite… Playing Sgrub with your friends…These and many other memories could be yours, just for the single payment of your night, and a bucketful of tears (pardon, if you will, the sexual reference). Unlike the preceding two nights, you didn’t get any sleep at all, and instead existed in a whirlwind of thoughts, memories, and almost dreams… Faces… Trolls and people you might never see again. 

It was about six A.M. before you drifted off into a half conscious state that might be somewhat closer to what some idiotic fuckwad out there could call sleep. And the supposedly restful state was somehow worse than the sleepless night had been, because at least with the sleepless night, you had been able to smell the rosy smell that the room had, and look at the stupid flowery couch, and know that you weren't with your friends anymore, and that they were doing probably better without you. These thoughts offered him some strange sort of condolence; they were oddly reassuring.

On the other hand, your dreams were fucked up memory fragments dragged straight up out of the fiery depths of Satan’s asshole. You couldn't remember that you weren’t right there, watching Terezi get hurt over and over again. You couldn’t even begin to think about that possibility as you watched your flushed crush die again and again. All you knew was that she was going to die, and you was going to have to watch, helpless, because in each and every one of the dreams that you had, you were stuck in place, watching, just watching, never able to move. Just as you had been in your final moments alive.

At around ten, you woke up screaming.

There was a reason that the trolls had Sopor, and that was the nightmares that your species could have. You no longer had access to Sopor. Hence, screaming. And that was really all there was to say on the matter; It wasn’t your fault that you woke up an adult human lusii in need of her beauty sleep. It was the fault of the stupid, non violent planet that didn’t need non nightmare juice to sleep in every night.

“TEREZI! TEREZI! STOP, YOU FUCK! LEAVE HER ALONE!”

There was a cold sweat clinging to your body like an exceptionally stubborn piece of shit simply refusing to fly right the fuck off the handle. With this scream, Paint jumped up from her bed, where she had been sleeping in her bedroom, and ran in, with a pink night gown fluttering behind her  
.   
“Karkat?!”

She screamed.

“OH… OH GOD… I’M NOT THERE… THAT WAS A DREAM, WASN’T IT?”

Helen was panting- she had felt the fear just as much as you had. ‘Just a dream… Just a dream…’

And yet, that mantra scared her a little bit, too. To her, you had seemed so unshakable, so strong, and now there was this. Now, you were sobbing, and whispering some name. Was it… Terexi? Teseri? Something like that.

“There, there… Kar… It was just a dream… Just a dream. You’re okay… You’re okay…” She had sat down beside you, a newly vulnerable and defenseless excuse for a troll, and you were now letting her rub circles into your back. you was surprised that you were okay with all of that, but hey, you were dealing with too much. The rhythmic motion was helpful. You would go to the grave before releasing this knowledge, but it made you feel just a little bit better, like a nice Sopor sleep used to.

“Are you going to be okay, kid?”

She asked after a while. Your face had hardened into it’s former shell, but she could see that it was ready to break open.

“No.” You answered, no longer shouting. The look on your face seemed to indicate that you had given up your will to live. 

It indicated this, well, because you had.


End file.
